


Fallen Memories

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [34]
Category: CSI
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’d glued herself back together, smoothing crazy glue over the cracks and turning this way and that so no one would see the holes left behind by pieces too shattered to replace. Warrick was one of those holes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen Memories

**Title:** Fallen Memories  
 **Author:** [](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/profile)[**vegawriters**](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/)  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Timeframe/Spoilers:** Post _Fallen Angels_.  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **A/N:** Is a part of the [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies) universe.  
 **Disclaimer** : You know the drill. I don't own any of this and make no money from it. That being said, if CSI is looking for a devoted writer ...

**Summary**  
 _She’d glued herself back together, smoothing crazy glue over the cracks and turning this way and that so no one would see the holes left behind by pieces too shattered to replace. Warrick was one of those holes._

_these tears i’ve cried_  
i’ve cried 1000 oceans  
and if it seems i’m  
floating. in the darkness 

_well, i can’t believe_  
that i would keep  
keep you from flying  
and i would cry 1000 more  
if that’s what it takes  
to sail you home  
sail you home  
sail you home  
~Tori Amos, 1000 Oceans 

The house is always silent. Even with the dog’s racing to greet her, his nails scratching on the hardwood floor of the kitchen, the house is silent. Today, instead of their usual walk, Hank gets let out into the yard and Sara makes her way through the rooms, up the stairs into the loft bedroom. The loft bedroom she shares, in theory, with the husband who spends more time overseas than with her. After Warrick’s death, she’d stretched out next to Gil on their bed, on the very bedspread that now dons the mattress. Gil had held her, staring up at the ceiling but seeing nothing, and she’d begged him to leave the job, to leave with her. He’d begged her to stay. Four years later, treks through jungles and deserts and wedding bands exchanged between them, a part of her wonders if they are still having that argument, the argument that ended in her leaving without a word. She hadn’t even left a note.

Four years later, it feels like a lifetime. Before she’d left that first time, she’d sat up the night with Warrick. She’d been going crazy, reliving her abduction by Natalie, and somehow, somehow the bastard knew it and he’d tracked her down to this spot high atop one of the casinos. His footfalls in the roof dust were scratchy but she hadn’t been scared. Somehow, without turning around, she’d known it was him. Gil had been doing his best to keep her positive and calm. Greg had been nervous around her. But Warrick cut through the bullshit. It was the nature of their relationship, the demand of how they’d evolved together. Natural enemies come to respect and love each other.

He’d tracked her down and sat next to her, staring out at the desert that had almost eaten her alive. He’d held her still healing hand while she wiped tears away with the healthy one. She’d told him about her mother for the first time, how she’d ducked her father’s hands while praying for her mother’s sanity. She’d told him about the smell of cigarette smoke that permeated everything and the keening wheeze of her mother’s breathing and the night, that fateful night, when her mother had snapped. When what was left of her mother’s sanity and gone up in a blaze of schizoaffective mood swings triggered by drugs, and how even as the knife was squishing into her father’s chest, her mother had asked if Sara still loved her.

“Did you?” He’d asked, quietly. Always questioning. Always wondering. It was what made him a damned good detective.

“I still do,” had been her broken answer and it was then on that rooftop that they’d both known she was going to disappear. It was only a matter of time before the ghosts of her past pushed her over the edge and now she lived with the reality that she’d known then that his ghosts were also walking too close for comfort. And just as no one had been able to save her, no one had been able to save him either. The truth was, sometimes being broken was the only way to exist.

But she wasn’t broken anymore. She’d glued herself back together, smoothing crazy glue over the cracks and turning this way and that so no one would see the holes left behind by pieces too shattered to replace. Warrick was one of those holes. She’d left again after the funeral, leaving a bag of takeout next to the front door of Tina’s place. Eli had been crying and instead of demanding entry, Sara had run. She’d run so far that it took the man she’d eventually married cutting through jungles before anyone found her again. She’d run and ignored the basic truths of grief – that even though it is a road that must be walked alone, turning away from someone is the worst sin you can commit.

Crawling across the bed, she collapses into the pillow, Gil’s pillow, and inhales what is left of his faded scent. She holds the pillow like she’d held him that night, when they’d talked around each other, when she’d realized just how broken they were. She hasn’t told him about this case but he’ll want to know, he’ll cry when he hears how Warrick’s grave was covered in the blood of another. She knows that Gil still sees Warrick’s blood on his own hands. Her husband had held Warrick in those final moments, watching the life slip from him. She knew he still woke from nightmares, calling Warrick’s name. They’d been a team, a family, a motley crew of broken souls slogging through the shadows at night to bring light in the darkness. Catherine and her father and the damage left by Eddie, Nick and his good heart that was clogged with a desperate desire to only do good, Greg who was still outcast even in his conformity, Gil and his need to be separate, her with the cages of her memories, and Warrick who had been the living representation of everything they were all trying to forget: a past that would never let them be.

Tears fall and it is not a pretty cry. Her chest heaves as she pours Warrick’s tears into Gil’s pillow. She misses her husband and the strength he provides when she is too broken to keep going. She made peace with her ghosts, but they still follow her. What would Warrick think of her marriage, this marriage he’d foreseen coming since her move to Vegas. He’d used to tease her about how she didn’t like other women in Grissom’s life and once, just once, that teasing had led to a drunken night spent in Warrick’s bed and for a few hours, she’d forgotten why she’d actually moved to Vegas. They’d never spoken of it after it happened, but whenever he’d hugged her or kissed her cheek or yelled at her for taking a case too personally, she’d felt the memory. She’d studied theoretical physics, she believed in the concept of parallel universes. Somewhere, she and Warrick had a life together. But somewhere, she was also Batman.

In this life, she just wanted her husband. She wanted to crack beers for both of them and sit up late in front of the fire, sharing stories. She wanted to tell Gil about Eli and how he had Warrick’s hair. She wanted to listen to Gil talk, again, about how he’d met Warrick. In this universe, she wanted her husband to walk through the door, takeout from the Vegetarian Thai place in hand, and they’d eat and go to bed and make love in celebration of life even while mourning the past. Maybe, just maybe, it would be the time that stuck and they’d name the baby Warrick. But wishing didn’t make any of it so and when the dog barks, begging to be let in, Sara wipes her cheeks and blows her nose and goes to open the door. There is leftover pasta in the fridge and she mixes it with milk but heating it up for breakfast seems too much and she shoves it back in its Tupperware container.

Her phone chirps. Not her husband but Nick. _Breakfast with me and Greg?_ She understands. Get the gang together. Talk. Without Morgan or DB or Julie. But she isn’t sure about going. About sharing the memories. But Gil isn’t here and she’s grown enough to know when she shouldn’t be alone.

 _Okay._ She responds. But even the diner is gone. Where will they go? How will they toast? Something to be figured out when she meet up with them, she supposes. Her fingers linger on the phone and she finally texts her husband. _Call me. Please. Whenever you get this. Please._

A glance around the house again and it still feels just like it had that day four years ago.

Maybe things haven’t changed as much as she thought.


End file.
